Most operating systems provide a system clipboard (or simply clipboard) which is a temporary storage area for storing copied content so that it can later be pasted. A clipboard can typically store many different types of content including text, graphics, files, folders, etc. The clipboard stores a single “clipboard item” which will be the last content that was copied. Therefore, if the clipboard stores an item when the user performs a copy, the newly copied item will be stored in place of the previously stored item. The previously stored item will therefore be lost.
To address this issue, some tools have been implemented which buffer the items that are added to the clipboard so that they will remain accessible even if an item is overwritten in the clipboard. Such tools typically provide an interface by which the user can select an item from the buffer to be copied back to the clipboard where it will be available to be pasted in a typical manner. Although these tools are useful in a typical desktop environment, they provide minimal benefit in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment.